From Anne Hutchinson to Mariann Edgar Budde
American Anti-Nomianism and its False Gospel
The American project has always been shaped by two central tensions: the struggle between legalism and antinomianism, and the contrast between Christian salvation and the pursuit of mere material prosperity. These tensions can be examined separately or as interconnected forces that reinforce one another. When a society fails to seek and understand its chief end, it inevitably suffers the terrible natural consequences of that ignorance. Yet beyond this, divine providence also imposes judgments—some as restraints on sin, others as discipline to refine and correct believers.
American history can be framed between two false teachers who preached a distorted Gospel: Anne Hutchinson and Mariann Edgar Budde. Both advanced antinomianism and moral perversion and rejected the demands of God’s law. That one now wears a bishop’s robe and preaches from the pulpit of the Washington National Cathedral is a clear sign of divine judgment on our nation. The question before us is whether we will recognize this judgment and repent of the false Gospel that has been proclaimed from such an exalted position.
Anne Hutchinson was the seed, and Bishop Budde is the fully ripened, rotten fruit. Hutchinson defied the authority and teachings of the elders in the Massachusetts Bay Colony, setting up her own Bible study and claiming direct inspiration from the Holy Spirit. She rejected the necessity of outward obedience to God’s law, teaching that Christians, under grace, were not bound by any moral law—a doctrine known as antinomianism. She insisted that true believers were guided by inner revelation, dismissing the role of the objective truths in Scripture for doctrine and life.
Hutchinson’s teachings threatened not merely the social and theological order of the colony, but the immortal souls of those she influenced, leading to her trial and eventual banishment. In modern times, this error has been repackaged as “free grace,” a message that promises salvation without repentance or obedience. The consequences of such a distorted Gospel are now fully evident in figures like Bishop Budde, whose leadership from the pulpit is the logical conclusion of Hutchinson’s rebellion: a religion severed from God’s law and reduced to one of self-justification and moral anarchy.
Antinomianism arises from a fundamental misunderstanding of the purpose of God’s law and its various distinctions. The moral law, summarized in the Ten Commandments, was given to teach humanity how to live a life pleasing to God and to reveal our sin, pointing us to our need for grace. The ceremonial law, practiced by the Levites at the Tabernacle and later in the Temple, was not an end in itself—but a foreshadowing of the person and work of Christ, who would fulfill its types and shadows. The civil law of Israel, meanwhile, applied the moral law to the specific context of God’s covenant people during a unique period of redemptive history when they were a theocratic nation with no separation between religious and civil authority. Confusing these categories, as antinomianism does, leads to either lawlessness or legalism, failing to grasp that the moral law remains binding as the standard of righteousness while the ceremonial and civil laws have been fulfilled in Christ and the New Covenant.
In the Christian age, the ceremonial law has been fulfilled in Christ and is no longer binding. The civil law, which was uniquely applied to Israel, has also ended—though we can still derive general principles from it that remain relevant today. However, the moral law endures, revealing both what pleases the Lord and the depth of our ongoing sin.
Anne Hutchinson rejected this distinction, insisting that the Christian is under no law at all, a confusion that persists to this day. She wrongly accused her Puritan elders of teaching works righteousness simply because they affirmed that the Christian life always bears fruit pleasing to God. In her view, any emphasis on obedience suggested that salvation was earned by works rather than received by grace. This fundamental misunderstanding has echoed through the centuries, leading many to embrace a false dichotomy between faith and obedience, grace and law, causing significant theological and moral confusion in the church ever since.
This theological error reached its noxious public fruit in Bishop Budde’s sermon. After quoting from Matthew 7, she declared, “Rather, unity is a way of being with one another that encompasses and respects differences, that teaches us to hold multiple perspectives and life experiences as valid and worthy of respect.” In this statement, she replaced biblical truth with the relativism of our age, redefining unity as the mere acceptance of diverse perspectives rather than a shared commitment to Christ and His Word. By doing so, she revealed the logical conclusion of antinomianism: a false gospel that shuns God’s moral law. In her counterfeit gospel, faith is no longer tethered to objective truth but instead serves as a platform for affirming whatever views are most palatable to the cultural moment.
It is unclear why Bishop Budde believes that appealing to Jesus carries any weight when she so openly rejects the authority of Scripture in both her doctrinal positions and her teachings on sexuality. Like Anne Hutchinson before her, she trusts her own intuitions as divinely guided, granting herself the authority to pick and choose which parts of the Bible to apply and how to interpret them. In her framework, personal understanding aided by the 21st century moral consensus—not the Word of God—becomes the final authority.
She then declares, “The first foundation for unity is honoring the inherent dignity of every human being, which is, as all faiths represented here affirm, the birthright of all people as children of the One God.” Here, she moves beyond biblical Christianity into a universalist creed, flattening all distinctions between faiths and reducing unity to a vague affirmation of human dignity. But Scripture does not teach that all people by birthright are children of God; rather, it makes clear that we become children of God through faith in Christ (John 1:12). In elevating human intuition above divine revelation, Budde exemplifies the very antinomianism that has undermined the church for centuries, turning biblical authority into a tool for advancing cultural and political agendas rather than proclaiming the truth of the Gospel.
For Bishop Budde, all faiths represent and affirm the same truth—a claim that collapses under even the most basic study of world religions. Any introductory course in comparative religion makes it abundantly clear that this notion is not only absurd but also incomprehensibly simplistic. The world’s religions do not merely differ on minor points; they fundamentally reject the teachings of the Bible and the exclusive claims of Christ as well as God the Creator (Yahweh). The Gospel does not affirm all faiths as valid expressions of the same truth—it calls them to repentance, to turn from unbelief, and to embrace Christ as the only way to God.
Yet Bishop Budde, like Anne Hutchinson before her, elevates her own understanding above Scripture. The objective truths contained in the Bible are either used selectively to fit her needs or rejected as mere cultural artifacts of the ancient world. Just as Hutchinson scolded her Puritan elders based on self-proclaimed divine inspiration, Budde confidently sets aside biblical authority and replaces it with her own theological preferences. Where Scripture draws sharp distinctions between truth and error, Budde erases them, reducing Christianity to a vague, human-centered spirituality that bends to cultural pressures rather than standing on the unchanging Word of God.
Finally, Bishop Budde addressed President Trump directly, invoking the language of mercy. Mercy is indeed a virtue, and a call to it carries rhetorical power. But look at how she distorts its meaning to serve her own agenda: “In the name of our God, I ask you to have mercy upon the people in our country who are scared now. There are gay, lesbian, and transgender children in Democratic, Republican, and independent families who fear for their lives.”
Here, she falsely implies that gay, lesbian, and transgender children are under actual physical threat in America. If all she meant was that they perceive such a threat, then the proper response would be addressing their fears through mental health support, not distorting reality to fit a political narrative. This is the same delusion I encounter among university professors who have convinced themselves that the physical lives of transgender individuals are under mortal threat under conservative leadership.
By cloaking her political rhetoric in the language of mercy, Budde not only misrepresents the actual state of affairs but also weaponizes fear to advance her ideological goals. Instead of offering genuine pastoral care or biblical truth, she reinforces a false narrative that sows division, all while claiming the authority of God’s name to do so.
The real danger is not the imagined physical threats that Bishop Budde invokes but the very real risk of eternal loss. Jesus declared that only those who believe in Him will have eternal life (John 3:16). False teachers like Anne Hutchinson and Mariann Edgar Budde do not merely distort doctrine—they endanger souls by leading people away from the truth of the Gospel. By elevating personal intuition over Scripture, they replace divine revelation with human invention, offering a counterfeit faith that soothes rather than saves.
The question before us is whether we will continue down this path of compromise and confusion or return to the clear, unchanging truth of God’s Word. A society that abandons God’s moral law does not become free; it becomes enslaved to falsehood. The law of God is good and upright—it pleases God and it directs us to our chief end. The way forward is not through the empty platitudes of progressive theology but through repentance and renewed obedience to the Gospel. America does not need more self-styled prophets who twist Scripture to fit the spirit of the age—it needs faithful teachers who proclaim the whole counsel of God.
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